You force the music section to roadie for Raffi, and we reward you with a Payback Time T-shirt and two tickets to a Live Nation club show of your choice taking place in Vancouver within the next four weeks. Here’s this week’s winning whinge.

Dear Payback Time: On August 9, I attended an epic concert featuring a legendary band with over 20,000,000 units in combined sales of CDs/DVDs celebrating their 20th year of performing together. The performance I attended (the second of two shows at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre) featured an audience filled with fans young and old spanning multiple generations—though admittedly I didn’t see too many teens or 20-somethings in attendance. I’m speaking of the Wiggles, of course. This was the fifth time I’d seen them live, and I was looking forward to picking up my Georgia Straight on Thursday to compare my notes with those of your concert reviewer. Imagine my bewilderment when I found the only Tuesday-night concert being reviewed on your pages was that of some unproven tart from Britain named Adele. The show I attended was a wonderful retrospective journey through a storied career. Old gems such as “Rock-A-Bye Your Bear”, “Fruit Salad”, and “Toot, Toot, Chugga, Chugga, Big Red Car” were performed, of course. But the Wiggles even went deeper into their catalogue and performed early songs that I had never heard live, such as “Sing With Me” and “Wiggly Party”. My only beef would be that after 20 years, it was very apparent some of the performers were “phoning it in” at times. Yellow Wiggle Sam, Red Wiggle Murray, and (surprisingly!) Captain Feathersword all seemed to be simply going through the motions at one point or another. Only Blue Wiggle Anthony appeared to be giving it his all throughout the entire night. (Purple Wiggle Jeff, who recently underwent heart surgery, was replaced by an understudy named Brad.) Regardless, it was an unforgettable evening. Shame on you, Georgia Straight, for ignoring one of the greatest bands of all time.

> Kevin Warburton

Mike Usinger replies: Dearest Kevin—I’m going to be honest and confess that I can’t stand the fucking Wiggles. There’s a reason they were phoning it in: have you ever actually sat down and listened to the lyrics to “Toot, Toot, Chugga, Chugga, Big Red Car”? The goddamn lines don’t even rhyme. If you had to hit the stage night after night to deliver lines like “Anthony is eating—he’s got so much food.” you’d be taking to the floorboards in a catatonic stupor as well. And don’t even get me started on the Wiggles’ hyperexaggerated performance style. If I want to watch a musician making the kind of faces that suggests someone trying to give birth to a rolled-in-broken-glass redwood, I’ll watch the video for Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA”. If you want to see a real mind fuck, might I suggest that you save your money for the Doodlebops next time, for no other reason than they look like something dreamed up by Sid and Marty Krofft after smoking two herb-dusted bowls of marinated-in-liquid-crack Orange Sunshine. Well, that and the fact that “Get on the Bus” kicks the living shit out of “Fruit Salad” on the diaper-dumper-pop front.

You can voice your impotent rage by snail mail or by sending an email to payback@straight.com.